I like Hillary's talk on this. But talk is cheap. Ron Paul, a Libertarian in Republican disguise, may be running. He would be a candidate whose talk I would believe on privacy, or anything else.
That said, if Hillary MEANS it, her working with a Dem congress could make it happen.
I've read 7 reviews, and NO ONE MENTIONED THE CHUBB CHUBBS! It was a great cartoon.....worth the price of admission....worth going back to see again, to catch what I missed in it the first time.
My company uses it internally, as well as on clients' networks. It is the only reasonable solution we are aware of that does NOT depend on end users doing the "right thing". It is just about flawless, and does not take a highly trained professional to administer. Highly Recommended!
On my 17" monitor (Mac G-3 running 9.0.4 with IE 5.1.3) the sponsored ads are at the top of the page--though it is clear they are sponsored. Which is fine with me if it helps keep Google up.
"I fail to see how, in a system that has been pared to the bone and running probably about as efficiently as it's going to, how in the world introducing a profit motive, therefore slicing the pie ever further, is going to save money! "
Well, then I'll tell you. When a system is run by a government instead of the free market, it becomes extrodinarily inefficient. That's why the USSR couldn't keep consumers in goods. Under a free market system, there would be more pie, and competing pies....and costs, overall, would go down. It's actually quite simple.
For an example closer to home, look at how well government manages primary education in the US, particularly in large cities.
It's not completely an either/or deal, by the way. It's possible to put safety nets in place (though, to the extent that this is done, efficiency suffers).
that most of the comments so far are from people who have NOT seen the movie. I did, last night. It won't win any Academy nominations, and it's not another
Airplane...but it had a theatre full of people of all ages laughing their ass off...I mean, damn near ROTFL. Yes, bullet ducking time warp tricks have been overdone...and yes, I'm a Matrix loyalist, too....but I think Jon was a little too tough on this one. There is wizardry in the production techinques, and enough funny gags to make it worth the 8 bucks. For a different take on the movie (one which I agree with) go to Moviefone and read the Variety review. To read the whole thing, you'll have to do a free 30 day trial of their site.
And Jon....all the funny gags were NOT in the trailers...eg when the peasant woman picks up the baby...and that's in the first 2 minutes.
is not that we did it, but that we got caught. China wouldn't pass up on a chance to eavesdrop on our leaders....hell, FRANCE probably wouldn't. But anyone contemplating this kind of move has to consider the risk benefit ratio. What were we risking? Not much. China already knows we spy on them, just as they do us. But getting caught does make us look stupid, and someone's head should role for that.
Bruce was kind enough to reply concerning this post by email. I won't post the reply because I don' t have his permission, but the gist was that my comment was correct, but that even using different figures (he is using 1 in ten million after further research) and even assuming a wildly optimistic accuracy rate of 99.99, you STILL get 1000 false positives for every terrorist. He also supplied the following url to an additional article on this subject: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/21916.html
IANAM (I am not a mathmatician) but...In his example, he suggests one flyer out of a BILLION might be a terrorist. I don't have industry figures on numbers of people flying or flights...but this strikes me as way low. If we assume that there are 400 terrorists we have pictures of and want to track (that's the number of kamikazi volunteers Laden supposedly has-though I'd be surprised if we have all their pictures) and assume that they all travel by air once a year, then that suggests that there are four hundred BILLION discrete flyers per year using Bruces figures. Uh, I doubt it. Plug in your own figures and play with it. I'd guess the figures we should be starting with are more on the order of 1 in 500,000, not one in a billion....and that makes a BIG difference in the number of false positives.
That being said, Bruce seldom get's things wrong (and I reccomend his monthly email encryption newsletter to everyone) and even if the figures are off, the basic concept is right...that things like this will erode civil liberties without any resonable gain in the fight against terrorism. Actually, that's MY conclusion...Bruce concludes that it is unworkable, also true.
Well.....I own a Mac shop, and in my view (and experience) the lack of a fan on early Macs and the cube is a "bug, not a feature". Heat is the enemy of longevity, and heat problems abounded in the early, fanless Macs. A small cottage industry grew up for add-on fans. Though we haven't worked on too many cubes yet here, the word I have from shops that have is that, again, there are many heat problems. It seems that the good Mr. Jobs doesn't like fans....many enginers, including quite a few at Apple, strongly disagree.
Far better than Pearl Harbor OR Tora Tora Tora is the 1953 film From Here to Eternity. Nominated for 13 Academy Awards and winning 8, it deals with military life in Hawaii up to and including the attack on Pearl. If you don't rmember how great this film was, see http://www.filmsite.org/from.html
If you haven't seen it, rent it!
that the only safe recommendation my company can make to our clients is to go with Pac Bell DSL. Whatever else you can say about it, they are extremely likely to be around a year from now.
" While I'm not sure what I think about government sanctioned or required censoring,...." Well, I'm sure what I think. The government has absolutely no right to censor or require censoring of anything. That's the first amendment, and I am, I suppose, a first amendment absolutist. That is not to say that what AOL is doing is wrong....it's a completely different question. AOL is a private business, and private property, and if the powers that be there decide that creating a family oriented place is in their best interests, and will profit the company, then that is their call. (They don't seem in fact to go out of their way to do so, as reading the Salon piece mentioned by Timothy shows.) Anyone who doesn't like it, can go elsewhere or start a competing service which operates using different criteria. I may not personally _like_ the way AOL defines proper conduct, but I respect their right to do so.
Thanks for the correction. Although I didn't take that into account in my somewhat oversimplified breakdown, I ALSO didn't mention the fact that, of course, the person paying 500,000 in taxes is also paying a larger percentage of his income to start with.
Well, let's assume not. Though I don't approve of government programs in general, I've got to say that the cut programs would be ones on my personal save list. But your comments on taxes betray a real lack of understanding about what is going on. Rich people pay more taxes, so OF COURSE in a straight line cut, they are going to save more. Let's see: If I pay $500,000 in taxes, a 10% tax cut would mean I save $50,000. (Though still paying, please note, $450,000!) Whereas, if I pay 5,000 in taxes, my savings would be $500.
Duh. Is this horrible? I think not. People with a large income tend to be the most productive people. What do you want to do, give people a disincentive to be productive? We already do way too much of that, imnsho. Jeez....next you'll be telling us that government actually makes good and efficient use of our money that it takes.....
"Obviously, regenerative cartilage and neurons are not an evolutionary advantage. Although we cannot perhaps see the reason for this, it is clear it must be the case. " Actually, the reason is pretty clear--degenerate brain disease and cartilage problems tend to happen late in life, typically after the time when children are conceived. (And actually, after the life expectancy of many prior to modern medicine). Thus, with these problems, evolution tends not to come into play.
Unless I'm missing something here, it could easily help law enforcment. Take the following scenario:
Someone steals a teachers purse out of her desk drawer. Fingerprints are left, say on the handle. Why can't law enforcment derive the same algorithm from those prints? And compare algorithms?
Think it would be too much trouble? OK, then say a teacher is murdered in her home. Still think they wouldn't/couldn't do it ?
Bet they could. In my view, it is an invasion of privacy.
Interesting side note: A thumbprint is required in California to get a drivers license. When this was started, it was to help identify bodies in wrecks or whatever. I belive the thumbprint was optional at first, and then became mandatory. At the time, it wasn't very feasible to use the thumbprints to catch criminals or whatever, because of the massive time involved in searching (primarily visually) the DMV thumbprint records. Now, of course, a person can be I.D.ed in seconds from one fingerprint via scanning and computers. And don't think law enforcment isn't happy about it! And nearly every Californian age 16 or older is in that database.
If you trust government, and law enforcment, and furthermore think they ALWAYS will be trustworthy, then you may not think this is a bad thing. I disagree. You only have think back to Nixon (or, if you're too young for that, to the Ramparts Division of the LAPD) to see massive abuse of power.
Anyone interested in crypto should take a look at the free monthly newsletter Schneier sends out.
It's informative, authoritative, well written, opinionated, and interesting, with many links to other current crpto articles etc.
http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram.html
You call it like you see it....and I think you see it just right. Cryptonomicon is 3 times the SF book that Deepness is....and it's not even really written as traditional SF. Note that science fiction per se doesn't have to be future fiction. In fact, it can be past fiction (eg. the so called steam punk books). It (IMNSHO) merely has to be speculative/extrpolative, and involve scientific principles (as opposed to, say, magic). Cryptonomicon qualifies....and is about the best novel to come down the pike since maybe Neuromancer (or perhaps Stephenson's other books).
You may find that the credit card company takes a while to resolve the issue (it can go months). And it is by no means certain that it will be resolved in your favor. In order to keep monthly charges from appearing while you are trying to resolve it, one option is to report your card lost/stolen, and get a replacment issued. They will be unable to charge you further, as the replacment will of course have a number different than the one you used.
Hmm....actually, at least in California, it would in fact be called theft, probably "theft of services". Though it is a massive overreaction to charge them with a misdmeanor, which results in a criminal record. At most, this should call for some kind of campus discipline.
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I like Hillary's talk on this. But talk is cheap. Ron Paul, a Libertarian in Republican disguise, may be running. He would be a candidate whose talk I would believe on privacy, or anything else.
That said, if Hillary MEANS it, her working with a Dem congress could make it happen.
I've read 7 reviews, and NO ONE MENTIONED THE CHUBB CHUBBS! It was a great cartoon.....worth the price of admission....worth going back to see again, to catch what I missed in it the first time.
My company uses it internally, as well as on clients' networks. It is the only reasonable solution we are aware of that does NOT depend on end users doing the "right thing". It is just about flawless, and does not take a highly trained professional to administer. Highly Recommended!
On my 17" monitor (Mac G-3 running 9.0.4 with IE 5.1.3) the sponsored ads are at the top of the page--though it is clear they are sponsored. Which is fine with me if it helps keep Google up.
"I fail to see how, in a system that has been pared to the bone and running probably about as efficiently as it's going to, how in the world introducing a profit motive, therefore slicing the pie ever further, is going to save money! "
Well, then I'll tell you. When a system is run by a government instead of the free market, it becomes extrodinarily inefficient. That's why the USSR couldn't keep consumers in goods. Under a free market system, there would be more pie, and competing pies....and costs, overall, would go down. It's actually quite simple.
For an example closer to home, look at how well government manages primary education in the US, particularly in large cities.
It's not completely an either/or deal, by the way. It's possible to put safety nets in place (though, to the extent that this is done, efficiency suffers).
that most of the comments so far are from people who have NOT seen the movie. I did, last night. It won't win any Academy nominations, and it's not another
Airplane...but it had a theatre full of people of all ages laughing their ass off...I mean, damn near ROTFL. Yes, bullet ducking time warp tricks have been overdone...and yes, I'm a Matrix loyalist, too....but I think Jon was a little too tough on this one. There is wizardry in the production techinques, and enough funny gags to make it worth the 8 bucks. For a different take on the movie (one which I agree with) go to Moviefone and read the Variety review. To read the whole thing, you'll have to do a free 30 day trial of their site.
And Jon....all the funny gags were NOT in the trailers...eg when the peasant woman picks up the baby...and that's in the first 2 minutes.
is not that we did it, but that we got caught. China wouldn't pass up on a chance to eavesdrop on our leaders....hell, FRANCE probably wouldn't. But anyone contemplating this kind of move has to consider the risk benefit ratio. What were we risking? Not much. China already knows we spy on them, just as they do us. But getting caught does make us look stupid, and someone's head should role for that.
Bruce was kind enough to reply concerning this post by email. I won't post the reply because I don' t have his permission, but the gist was that my comment was correct, but that even using different figures (he is using 1 in ten million after further research) and even assuming a wildly optimistic accuracy rate of 99.99, you STILL get 1000 false positives for every terrorist. He also supplied the following url to an additional article on this subject: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/21916.html
IANAM (I am not a mathmatician) but...In his example, he suggests one flyer out of a BILLION might be a terrorist. I don't have industry figures on numbers of people flying or flights...but this strikes me as way low. If we assume that there are 400 terrorists we have pictures of and want to track (that's the number of kamikazi volunteers Laden supposedly has-though I'd be surprised if we have all their pictures) and assume that they all travel by air once a year, then that suggests that there are four hundred BILLION discrete flyers per year using Bruces figures. Uh, I doubt it. Plug in your own figures and play with it. I'd guess the figures we should be starting with are more on the order of 1 in 500,000, not one in a billion....and that makes a BIG difference in the number of false positives.
That being said, Bruce seldom get's things wrong (and I reccomend his monthly email encryption newsletter to everyone) and even if the figures are off, the basic concept is right...that things like this will erode civil liberties without any resonable gain in the fight against terrorism. Actually, that's MY conclusion...Bruce concludes that it is unworkable, also true.
Well.....I own a Mac shop, and in my view (and experience) the lack of a fan on early Macs and the cube is a "bug, not a feature". Heat is the enemy of longevity, and heat problems abounded in the early, fanless Macs. A small cottage industry grew up for add-on fans. Though we haven't worked on too many cubes yet here, the word I have from shops that have is that, again, there are many heat problems. It seems that the good Mr. Jobs doesn't like fans....many enginers, including quite a few at Apple, strongly disagree.
Far better than Pearl Harbor OR Tora Tora Tora is the 1953 film From Here to Eternity. Nominated for 13 Academy Awards and winning 8, it deals with military life in Hawaii up to and including the attack on Pearl. If you don't rmember how great this film was, see http://www.filmsite.org/from.html If you haven't seen it, rent it!
And I'd like to see other people around here write as well as Jon routinly does.
that the only safe recommendation my company can make to our clients is to go with Pac Bell DSL. Whatever else you can say about it, they are extremely likely to be around a year from now.
a solution to the Cubes heating problems!
" While I'm not sure what I think about government sanctioned or required censoring,...." Well, I'm sure what I think. The government has absolutely no right to censor or require censoring of anything. That's the first amendment, and I am, I suppose, a first amendment absolutist. That is not to say that what AOL is doing is wrong....it's a completely different question. AOL is a private business, and private property, and if the powers that be there decide that creating a family oriented place is in their best interests, and will profit the company, then that is their call. (They don't seem in fact to go out of their way to do so, as reading the Salon piece mentioned by Timothy shows.) Anyone who doesn't like it, can go elsewhere or start a competing service which operates using different criteria. I may not personally _like_ the way AOL defines proper conduct, but I respect their right to do so.
Thanks for the correction. Although I didn't take that into account in my somewhat oversimplified breakdown, I ALSO didn't mention the fact that, of course, the person paying 500,000 in taxes is also paying a larger percentage of his income to start with.
Well, let's assume not. Though I don't approve of government programs in general, I've got to say that the cut programs would be ones on my personal save list. But your comments on taxes betray a real lack of understanding about what is going on. Rich people pay more taxes, so OF COURSE in a straight line cut, they are going to save more. Let's see: If I pay $500,000 in taxes, a 10% tax cut would mean I save $50,000. (Though still paying, please note, $450,000!) Whereas, if I pay 5,000 in taxes, my savings would be $500. Duh. Is this horrible? I think not. People with a large income tend to be the most productive people. What do you want to do, give people a disincentive to be productive? We already do way too much of that, imnsho. Jeez....next you'll be telling us that government actually makes good and efficient use of our money that it takes.....
"Obviously, regenerative cartilage and neurons are not an evolutionary advantage. Although we cannot perhaps see the reason for this, it is clear it must be the case. " Actually, the reason is pretty clear--degenerate brain disease and cartilage problems tend to happen late in life, typically after the time when children are conceived. (And actually, after the life expectancy of many prior to modern medicine). Thus, with these problems, evolution tends not to come into play.
Unless I'm missing something here, it could easily help law enforcment. Take the following scenario: Someone steals a teachers purse out of her desk drawer. Fingerprints are left, say on the handle. Why can't law enforcment derive the same algorithm from those prints? And compare algorithms? Think it would be too much trouble? OK, then say a teacher is murdered in her home. Still think they wouldn't/couldn't do it ? Bet they could. In my view, it is an invasion of privacy. Interesting side note: A thumbprint is required in California to get a drivers license. When this was started, it was to help identify bodies in wrecks or whatever. I belive the thumbprint was optional at first, and then became mandatory. At the time, it wasn't very feasible to use the thumbprints to catch criminals or whatever, because of the massive time involved in searching (primarily visually) the DMV thumbprint records. Now, of course, a person can be I.D.ed in seconds from one fingerprint via scanning and computers. And don't think law enforcment isn't happy about it! And nearly every Californian age 16 or older is in that database. If you trust government, and law enforcment, and furthermore think they ALWAYS will be trustworthy, then you may not think this is a bad thing. I disagree. You only have think back to Nixon (or, if you're too young for that, to the Ramparts Division of the LAPD) to see massive abuse of power.
Anyone interested in crypto should take a look at the free monthly newsletter Schneier sends out. It's informative, authoritative, well written, opinionated, and interesting, with many links to other current crpto articles etc. http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram.html
You call it like you see it....and I think you see it just right. Cryptonomicon is 3 times the SF book that Deepness is....and it's not even really written as traditional SF. Note that science fiction per se doesn't have to be future fiction. In fact, it can be past fiction (eg. the so called steam punk books). It (IMNSHO) merely has to be speculative/extrpolative, and involve scientific principles (as opposed to, say, magic). Cryptonomicon qualifies....and is about the best novel to come down the pike since maybe Neuromancer (or perhaps Stephenson's other books).
You may find that the credit card company takes a while to resolve the issue (it can go months). And it is by no means certain that it will be resolved in your favor. In order to keep monthly charges from appearing while you are trying to resolve it, one option is to report your card lost/stolen, and get a replacment issued. They will be unable to charge you further, as the replacment will of course have a number different than the one you used.
Hmm....actually, at least in California, it would in fact be called theft, probably "theft of services". Though it is a massive overreaction to charge them with a misdmeanor, which results in a criminal record. At most, this should call for some kind of campus discipline.
Try http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/02/10/zawin ski/index.html
Yeah... /. was down for hours. A lot of us are wondering about that...